te so easily, had he been aware that Col. Bancker had announced his
intention of being at the house in the evening (as _he_ had not), and
that Emily had begged her aunt to come down from her room and sit with
her in the parlor, on purpose to prevent the expected Colonel having an
opportunity for one word with her in private. But these men are so
unreasonable as well as so blind! There is no satisfying them,
especially with the amount of attention shown them by a woman whom they
happen to fancy that they love. Perhaps men do not grow actually jealous
any more easily than women, but they grow "miffed" and "hurt" a thousand
times easier--let the fact be recorded. There is one instance on
legendary record, of a woman who divided her husband with another, at
the time of the chivalrous adventures of the Crusaders; but the instance
has not yet come to light of the man who so divided his _wife_.
Mormonism at the present day shows the pitch even of fanatical tolerance
to which the female mind can be wrought in this direction; while we have
yet to look for the corresponding instance on the other side, in which
the women of a community appropriate to themselves half a dozen or fifty
husbands each, and the men consent to the division.

This difference goes much farther even than the regulation (can such a
thing be regulated?) of jealousy. Where no jealousy exists,
exclusiveness and the sense of propriety comes into the account--again
on the male side of the calculation. Jones and his wife being both
wall-flowers at any evening party, Mrs. Jones did not feel aggrieved,
but rather proud, at Mrs. Thompson's re-union, that Jones went off for
an hour to pay the usual flirting attention to the wives of half a dozen
of his acquaintances; while Jones colored to the eyes and could scarcely
be restrained from making a fool of himself, because Robinson sat down
in the vacant chair beside his wife, and tried to be agreeable. And when
the Emperor and Lady Flora were at Niagara last summer, it is not upon
record that the lady made any objection to the gentleman lingering an
hour too late upon Goat Island with that blonde-haired English girl who
was such an unmistakeable flirt,--while the gentleman went on like a
madman on the balcony of the Cataract, because Lady Flora ran away for
half an hour in broad daylight, to Prospect Point, with an old friend of
her father's, _oelat_ fifty and incurably an invalid. Ah, well--so it
has been from the days o